March’s jobs data sparked a new round of second-guessing the Fed. Neil Irwin calls the report “terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad” and says it may lead the Fed to reconsider its flirtation with ending QE. Jon Hilsenrath agrees about the Fed, noting that “hourly earnings were up just 1.8% from a year earlier, meaning little upward momentum in household purchasing power or inflation”. The markets agreed, with the 10-year Treasury yield falling to 1.6855%, the lowest level of the year.

Not everyone saw doom in the BLS figures. Joe Weisenthal calls the data “GREAT” news, based on job growth in key sectors like construction (18,000 jobs) and professional services (54,000 jobs). The Bonddad Blog points to other positives: the broader U6 unemployment rate, which includes people who’ve stopped looking for work, fell, and Americans are working longer hours. There are “simply too many good internals in this report for me to proclaim that we are DOOMED!”, he writes. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities notes that, after cutting 718,000 jobs since 2008, states and cities actually added jobs in March.

UBS’ Drew Matus worries about a growing shortage of American workers; nearly half a million Americans left the labor force in March, which sent the unemployment rate down slightly to 7.6%. But Binyamin Appelbaum sees a much less clear picture of our labor force: we simply don’t know how many people would return to work, even if they could find jobs.

The unemployment rate treats all of these people as invisible. The employment rate treats them all as potential workers. The truth surely lies in between: It has become a little easier, but not much, to find work if you want it.